


Kiss me, Kill me

by frozenbaozi



Series: the adventures of little devil!hyuck and whipped!mark begin! [2]
Category: NCT (Band), NCT Dream, NCT ensemble - Fandom
Genre: Laser Tag, M/M, Mark is a panicked gay, kiss me and walk away au, only hyuck can kill mark!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-09 10:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20851685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozenbaozi/pseuds/frozenbaozi
Summary: So here they are at the laser tag court, six college guys about to murder each other with guns that light up.Mark fears for his life.





	Kiss me, Kill me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatfrightens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatfrightens/gifts).

> The long awaited laser tag fic is Here!  
I hope you enjoy Mark gay panicking for an entire fic (again)!
> 
> #

Now, Mark sees himself as a person who’s cool with a lot of things. Things like only eating noodles for two weeks straight because he’s on a college budget, and like his neighbor playing Bollywood soundtracks very loudly at midnight. Those are things that he can deal with. 

He draws the fucking line, though, at laser tag.

—Is what he had told himself, anyway. Maybe he would have drawn the fucking line there, had it not been for the fact that it was Donghyuck who’d suggested they try it. They’d been sprawled out on Mark’s bed, he remembers, trying out this whole studying deal, and Donghyuck had looked over and asked him, all the while putting a whole lot of effort into looking cute and absolutely irresistible to get Mark to agree to go (as if he would ever be able to say no to him in the first place). Needless to say, it had just went downhill from there.

So here they are at the laser tag court, six college guys about to murder each other with guns that light up. Brilliant idea! But Mark’s cute boyfriend is as excited as ever and he has a hand locked tightly around Mark’s wrist so he can’t run away. It hurts a little, actually, and it sort of feels like Donghyuck is trying to compress his wrist bone. Mark knows, though, that it’s just him trying to make Mark feel safe. God knows he wants to, though — run away, that is — but he’s a little weak and a lot in love, so he just wiggles his arm out of Donghyuck’s hold and slides it down to intertwine their fingers instead. Donghyuck beams at him and Mark sends him a look of surrender in return.

Yukhei and Chittaphon (whom everyone apparently calls Ten? Mark hasn’t really bothered to figure out why yet, but he appreciates the nickname nonetheless - he’s been afraid to butcher his actual real name up until now) are already inside buying tickets for themselves, and also for Xiaojun and Sicheng whom Ten has somehow convinced to join them. Mark swears the guy is some sort of supernatural being. He’s been studying up on faery kidnappings recently, just in case. Oh well — the more, the merrier, was all Donghyuck had said in response when Mark had asked him if anyone was coming with them. He’d had his innocent face on, the little devil. Mark should have known better than to trust that by now, he really should. 

Talking about scary people — Xiaojun, Mark thinks, suffers from a severe case of Resting-Bitch-Face, and when Mark accidentally locks eyes with him he redirects his eyes as quickly as he can on pure instinct. Despite that though, Sicheng is the scarier of the two beating his actually bouncy, hilarious miniature boyfriend by a mile. While the two boys don’t exactly look merry they’re both pleasant to be around and a nice change of pace from time to time. Since Donghyuck and he got together, Mark has been spending almost all of his time outside of class and studying with either Donghyuck, Yukhei and Ten, or all three of them, and it beats him how their brains always seem to be going through thoughts twice as fast as his own. He’s not complaining, don’t get him wrong — there hasn’t been a single boring moment during the time he’s spent with them. But still, a few hours of just lazing around doesn’t hurt anyone.

They’ve finally caught up to Ten and Yukhei now, and with the last duo of the party trailing behind them, all that’s left is to pay for Mark’s and Donghyuck’s entry tickets, and then there’s really no way back. Mark looks ahead to where Ten is leaning onto a waiting chair, and they make eye contact for just a split second until Ten drags his eyes away with a cheshire smile playing on his lips. He looks away, too, when he feels Donghyuck poke him on the shoulder.

“You look as scared of him as Lucas does, babe,” he laughs. “ Relax. He doesn’t bite.”

“Yeah, he fucking does! Have you seen Lucas’ neck?” Mark retorts, but all he gets in return is Donghyuck shaking his head as his cheeks go a little red. Mark knows Ten probably didn’t even mean anything with the smile because he always looks at people that way anyway, so he tries not to think too hard about it. He accidentally thinks about Ten shoving a beam gun in his chest while wearing that face and shudders involuntarily. No, thank you.

It’s a secret, but the only reason Mark resents laser tag is because he went once with his class back in high school. It was in junior year, right after Donghyuck had transferred in. Mark had, of course, gotten placed in the girls’ group because there were too many boys. As a result, he’d come in at an impressive dead last because he hadn’t wanted to shoot at the girls, and they had all ridiculed him in front of all the others including Donghyuck, whom he had already started crushing on back then (but only a little).

Mark is sure Donghyuck remembers, and he’s thankful he hasn’t brought it up, always impressed by just how intuitive his boyfriend is. Mark won’t describe himself as lacking in the social skills department but most of the time Donghyuck just seems to be in possession of a sixth sense for other people’s mental states. He looks down to where their fingers are still tangled together and can’t help but smile a little. When he lifts his head again Donghyuck is already looking right back at him, a reflecting smile playing on his lips, and Mark feels him squeeze a little more around his hand as if to say Hey, you’re around people you can trust.

He shakes his head, a little disbelieving, and wonders how he got so lucky.

(In hindsight, he really should have known better.)

Somewhere between watching Yukhei trying to flirt with the instructor and getting caught off guard by Donghyuck landing a big, wet smooch on his cheek (“Only as an apology in advance, because I’m going to absolutely crush you in there”), Mark begins to laugh along with the others. The atmosphere is light and they’re nodding along to the instructor listing the rules of the game — no physical contact between players, don’t steal equipment from other players, they die if they’re shot three times, they’re welcome to form alliances and so on. Mark stops listening after the third rule.

By the looks of it, Sicheng and Xiaojun have already teamed up, and to Mark, they both look like people who have gone laser tagging… Well, a lot. He will never say this out loud but if he’s being honest they kind of terrify him, and the thick harnesses around their chests along with foot-long beam guns by their sides do nothing to alleviate his wariness. Yeah, he’s being foolish. And yeah, he knows. It wouldn’t stop him from slipping a little closer to Donghyuck for protection if one of them looked at him wrong, though. He knows Xiaojun couldn’t hurt a fly but he’s not so sure about that when it comes to Sicheng. He doesn’t recall ever seeing the dude expressing an emotion.

When they’ve all strapped on the vests and each have a beam gun in one hand, they get the clear to go in. The equipment is slightly uncomfortable and scratchy around his torso through the thin fabric of his shirt, but Mark ignores it in favour of looking around inside the dark court. It all looks like a place straight out from some video game, and he feels a little like eight-year-old Mark again, playing with toy sized war machines and conquering his entire carpet with just three plastic tanks and a bendy rubber snake.

There isn’t a lot of light, and the walls and obstacles are all black save for rows of neon lights lining the ceiling and walls, and little screens here and there that show the court in map format. On them, Mark can see how the court is formed like some kind of labyrinth, not quite complex but still confusing to be running around in. A kind of mist is floating around the whole place, and when he test fires his gun, the track of it shows in the air. Mark is feeling slightly uncool, the way he handles the toy gun feels clumsy and a little uncoordinated compared to the rest of the party, who seem to at least sort of know what they’re doing.

And Mark is Mark, so when the countdown begins the first strategy that comes to mind is, of course, hiding. Thus, he sprints to the first obstacle and only has to wiggle for a few seconds to get his butt to follow him over it. He sees Yukhei and Ten spring in opposite directions — it looks like they’re trying to corner Sicheng. Xiaojun and Donghyuck are nowhere to be seen, and Mark thinks he’s safe for a while. Not that they scare him, or anything. He’s just being precarious is all, he tells himself, because having a literal target on his back is sort of unnerving as shit. 

Okay, so thinking that he was safe was a fucking mistake, Mark admits to himself a few minutes later, and curses his smoker lungs as he struggles to breathe properly. He’s only been running for a few seconds, but the scare he got when Xiaojun whipped his entire upper body around the corner Mark had been hiding right behind was enough to send his heart to his throat. So yeah, he’d gotten shot, but only once before running off and scrambling to make it over another obstacle. Mark swears to make it a point not to underestimate Xiaojun ever again.

He checks the counter on his side just to be sure: two lives left. It feels a bit like the red dots are laughing at him, and he shakes his head, laughing despite himself. That had been really fucking close to becoming humiliating. Mark hears the faint sound of a buzzer going off from somewhere outside the court, then, telling everybody that somebody’s died. So somehow, he realises, he’s going to end up somewhere not-last-place. What a fucking achievement. He wonders briefly where Donghyuck might be and then tries to shrug off the goosebumps at the image. Prays he won’t find him, remembers what he had said before they had entered the venue, the words “I’m going to absolutely crush you in there”. Yikes, absolute yikes.

He’s in a narrow pathway now as he tries out his new persona, stealth-Markinator-3000, while he listens for footsteps and voices to dash away from. It’s a bit like being a character in a horror movie, and since Mark, in this specific scenario, is the male character who talks a lot and is a total Bro, he just knows he’ll be the next one to die.

Leave it to Mark to jinx himself, it turns out he’s right.

Just as he ducks under a barricade he stumbles over a stray wire connected to one of the map screens, and suddenly there’s a Donghyuck, and he stumbles again — only avoiding collision (and death by Donghyuck abs) by a hand’s width. 

“Motherfu — “ shit, he had totally been waiting for Mark, “ — cker.” He bumps forehead first into Donghyuck’s chest and wow, he really does look kind of hot in that vest, Mark notices a little late. His hair is tousled from running around, his breathing is coming out in quick little puffs that make the smoke in the air around his face go curly, and he’s got a gun pointed straight at Mark’s temple.

Wait — he’s got a gun pointed straight at Mark’s temple — he’s about to reach up and swat the beam gun away from his face, but then he’s being nudged to stand up. And then he’s at eye level with Donghyuck, who’s still got the gun attached to Mark’s head, right above his ear and oh, this isn’t really about the game anymore, is it?

“What are you — ?”

“Shh,” Donghyuck just whispers, all cheshire smile (this is Ten’s work. Fuck you, Ten) and crescent eyes, as he moves a hand to fit at the back of Mark’s neck and tugs lightly at the hair there, urging him backwards. Mark swallows thickly because as much as he loves Donghyuck he’s also scared as fuck. Both because of Hyuck but also because in his mind, Xiaojun could come from anywhere right about now and kill them both, and Mark actually doesn’t find the thought of that very appealing because he feels like he has left that particular lifestyle behind him in middle school. Donghyuck does not seem to have one such issue — Mark swallows. Does he have to smile like that? He knows it gets Mark weak.

He thinks he stumbles a little, legs too wobbly to function, but Donghyuck is right there with a hand to support him, and all Mark can register is that wow, Donghyuck has a warm hand, and that his palm feels like it’s burning through the thin fabric of Mark’s t-shirt from where it’s splayed out over his lower back. It feels like the heat is swimming around in his stomach. He takes a shallow breath when his back hits a wall at the back of a dead end of the labyrinth. 

And he really isn’t even that small compared to his boyfriend — taller, actually, thank you very much — but with Donghyuck looking at him like that, he sure does feel like he is. Donghyuck’s eyes are intense, dark in a way they only get when they’re all alone, and Mark just now notices the hint of brown lining his lashes. He might have gotten a bit lost in those eyes, he thinks, because one second they’re looking at each other and the next, he’s being pressed against Donghyuck, the arm around his waist tightening, and then Donghyuck kisses him. (They are in the middle of a laser tag game! What the fuck, Donghyuck!) 

It doesn’t even last more than two seconds but when he pulls away, Mark feels a little dazed the way he always does after Donghyuck kisses him. He smiles at Mark, and his nose crinkles a little and —

And then Mark’s chest flickers red two times, and a buzzer goes off, and Donghyuck just fucking killed him. 

Mark only just manages to poke his idiot boyfriend really hard in the side once before Donghyuck is rolling backwards underneath the obstacle Mark had come from(how the capital Fuck did he do that?), and then he’s gone, and Mark is left with a funny sort of feeling swimming around in his gut. He stays in that spot for a few minutes after the buzzer, letting the colour fade from his cheeks and the stubborn grin at the corner of his mouth melt off before he accepts defeat. When he gets outside Xiaojun is already there, and when he asks why Mark is smiling, Mark just shakes his head and laughs.

The others join them one after the other and when Donghyuck eventually emerges, blinking rapidly to get used to the light outside the dark court, it’s with little beads of sweat rolling down the length of his neck to disappear underneath his black t-shirt, and a self satisfied look on his face. Lucas is following close behind and is in no better state, and he whacks Donghyuck on the shoulder playfully when he passes him. He gets a little smile in return, and then they both break out laughing, which makes Mark crack up at the way they’re hiccuping like kids after a playfight. There are red spots dotting both their cheeks, Lucas has something like the beginning of a bruise on the side of his forearm, and Donghyuck is still so out of breath he seems to hardly be able to breathe on top of the bubbling laughter.

Mark smiles, minding his own fucking business and watching his boyfriend being happy, and there is a little feeling contracting at the pit of his stomach, a tiny marble of glowing heat that bursts very abruptly when a weight lands heavily on his back, holding onto his neck for purchase. He elbows Ten in the guts as hard as he can in shock, and the boy keens, folding in on himself.

“Ow, you shit,” Ten wheezes.

“What did you want, fuck, I’m sorry, Ten!”

“Stop yelling,” Ten dismisses his concern with a wave of his hand. He flashes a thumbs-up in Lucas’ general direction at his worried stare. Turns his attention back to Mark. “You just look so in love. Let me be happy for you once in a while.”

Damn, Mark thinks. “Damn,” he says, “I never would have expected you to have an EQ high enough for you to be able to say that. EQ means—”

“I know what EQ means, I went to school once,” Ten says, but because Ten is Ten, Mark does not believe anything he says in general. So, Ten hits him back and calls him rude. Then his face softens and he looks Mark in the eye with earnesty, and the air between them somehow becomes heavy.

And since Mark is an absolute expert af avoiding any sort of situation where he might have to talk about his feelings — well, to anyone apart from Donghyuck, who would probably murder him if he were to keep any negative thoughts all bottled up — cuts Ten off with a nervous laugh right as he’s about to say something probably really nice and friend-like in favour of joining Lucas and Donghyuck a few meters away. They’re chatting animatedly about the game with Xiaojun who has Sicheng standing next to him with a bottle of powerade between his hands, wide eyed and smiling as he listens in. Oh, Mark thinks. So that’s why everyone is so smitten with him.

Mark has a jump in his step as he approaches the group and beelines for Donghyuck’s shoulder to rest his head on after giving his boyfriend a wet smooch to the cheek. He feels tension melt from his body when Donghyuck swings an arm around his waist, squeezing tightly, and pointedly ignores Ten’s wolf whistles coming from behind him. 

Mark tunes in to the conversation just in time to catch Xiaojun loudly complaining. “I CAN’T believe you killed me, Lee Donghyuck! Of all the people here, it just had to be you,” he says, goodnaturedly. Donghyuck sticks out his tongue at him.

“You shot Mark! What was I supposed to do, not avenge him?”

He barely gets to finish his sentence before Lucas laughs, “He shot Mark? Xiaojun, I am so sorry to be the one to break this to you but hurting Mark is, like, death sentencing yourself.” And the look on Xiaojun’s face is… Is a lot of exasperation squeezed into one small space, his eyebrows going all wrinkly and his nostrils flaring, but he’s laughing all the same.

“It’s fucking laser tag! A game! All of you are losers!” Xiaojun throws his hands in the air, turns around. Very theatrical, Mark respects that. “I’m going home, have fun being losers,” he shouts back at the rest of them, and offers his arm to Sicheng who rolls his eyes. They all wave at the pair, wolf whistles ringing in the air until they’ve rounded the first corner and are out of sight. After that, the remaining four also say their goodbyes, agreeing to do a re-battle sometime soon. Lucas’ hugs are bone-crushing as usual and Ten stupefies Mark with a cheek kiss, and then it’s just Mark and Donghyuck again.

It’s gotten darker during their time in the venue, and as they’re walking home Mark can’t help but notice the way Donghyuck seems to light up under the streetlights. The warm hues match the colour of his hair and makes it look like freshly fallen leaves, and the nuances of his skin stand out even more, and Mark is so, so gone for him.

“So… Avenging me, huh?” He snorts, and it kills the serene atmosphere around them instantly. Donghyuck sighs, a long drawn, tired noise, and buries his head in Mark’s shoulder.

“Babe, darling, the prettiest boy. Will you shut the fuck up about that?”

Walking like this with their heads pressed together and Donghyuck’s hand in Mark’s back pocket doesn’t quite make it into the top ten comfortable positions to take a stroll in, but they both know that they wouldn’t trade it for anything. He grins for who-knows-which-time this night, gives Donghyuck’s waist a warning pinch. “Say please,” he whispers, and gets an annoyed groan in return.

“Please?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you lots for reading!  
Remember to leave a kudos and a little comment with your Thots!
> 
> twitter: rebellijoon  
curiouscat: rebellijooon


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